I first met Delaine Moore about two-and-a-half years ago when she emailed me about a memoir she had just written. We started corresponding and talking by phone about her book and what it was going to take to get it published.

As I usually do when talking to a first-time author, I encouraged her to break out of the traditional thinking of turning over her manuscript to an agent and sitting back and waiting for the contract, advance and subsequent royalties to come rolling in.

Delaine had written a raucous and often funny memoir of her discovery of her husband’s infidelities, their separation and divorce (in progress at that time) and her reawakening as a single woman with three small children. I once described her memoir as “Little Annie Fannie meets Alice in Wonderland all rolled up in a morality play.”

To begin our new series called Memoir Moments, we’ve invited Linda Joy Myers, author and founder of National Association of Memoir Writers, to share her ideas about finding the right opening for your memoir.